


Break

by babel



Category: Marble Hornets
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-19
Updated: 2013-07-19
Packaged: 2017-12-20 17:58:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,015
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/890182
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/babel/pseuds/babel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tim wakes up from a blackout with blood on his hands.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Break

_He's washed his hands until they're raw, but he can still smell blood on them._

* * *

The mask is on the pillow of the motel bed.

He is on the floor, and when he pulls himself up to his knees he finds it on the pillow of the motel bed, staring up at the ceiling. The first thing he thinks is maybe it can't sleep the way he can't, and the second thing he thinks is where is Jay, and the third thing he thinks is that the sheets are stained with blood.

It's not the sheets, though. The blood is on his hands. The blood is on his hands, and it soaks his jacket all the way up to the elbows, and where is Jay?

* * *

The man at the front desk says he's in a town he's never heard of, and outside there isn't much of anything to give him a better idea where he is. Just a highway and Jay's car on the gravel parking lot, and he wonders how he got a room when he was covered in blood until he sees red smudges along the bottom of the window that leads into the room he woke up in.

There's no blood on the car, though. No blood in it either, from what he can see through the windshield. No phone, no computer, and no keys to the locked trunk. No keys in the room either, just a bag with some clothes and the cash he has left.

* * *

There's a phone in the lobby. Tim calls Jay's number three times and leaves three messages in the course of an hour.

_It's Tim, where are you? Just call back this number. Tell them room 4._

_Tim again. Your car's here too._

_Yeah, it's... Just let me know you're okay. Please._

His hands still smell like blood.

* * *

Tim doesn't touch the mask. He lays down on the floor when it's late, and he's so tired he feels sick. He's trying not to think about how he only has fourteen pills left. He's trying not to think about Jay.

He stares up at the ceiling like the mask is staring up at the ceiling and neither of them sleep.

* * *

The motel phone rings at about one in the afternoon, and the guy at the front desk says there's a call for him. Tim accepts the charges.

"Um, hi. Is this, um, Tim?" The voice isn't Jay's.

"Yeah. Who are you?"

The voice laughs awkwardly. "I found this phone, um. The one you were calling yesterday? I just found it on the ground, so your friend, uh, Jay or whatever must've lost it."

Tim has to kneel by the bed to hold the phone, and he's so close to the mask he swears it's looking at him instead of the ceiling.

"Did... Did you want to come get it for him, maybe?"

"Get rid of it," Tim says, and he hangs up.

* * *

Tim walks along the highway for hours. The mask is still on the pillow in the motel room, and everything else Tim still has is in the bag on his shoulder. He has two bottles of water from a vending machine, and they've been empty for a while by the time he reaches a gas station.

"Hey, I remember you," says the girl from behind the counter. Tim blinks at her, trying to make something in his mind click. "With the nervous little guy. Is he all right?"

His stomach is twisting in knots, and he'd probably throw up if he'd eaten anything in the last fourty-eight hours. "I haven't seen him in a few days. Was he... Did he not seem all right when we were here?"

"You, uh. You said he was sick or something... Have you been walking a ways? You look like you could use some water."

Tim shakes his head and the bell over the door clangs on his way out.

* * *

There's a forest on the other side of the highway, and Tim crosses over to it. He hopes a semi will slam into him, but it doesn't.

He drops his bag by a tree somewhere and keeps going. He lets branches scrape his skin, and he stumbles a few times over rocks and roots, and it's getting dark but he keeps walking. 

" _Where are you?_ " His voice echoes through the trees. A startled bird flies up toward the sky. "What did you do? What did you _make me do_?"

There's no light filtering down through the tree branches anymore, no sound of cars speeding by from the road. No birds or cicadas.

Something crunches against dry leaves ahead of him. A footstep. Something moving in the darkness. He runs after it blindly until his eyes catch hold of a light up ahead.

There's an abandoned shack, and someone is inside with a flashlight. 

He reaches the doorway out of breath, and the hooded man is standing there. He's holding a flashlight in one hand and a camera in the other, and he's pointing the camera at you. He's pointing the flashlight at the words on the wall written in blood.

_not your fault_

The _not_ is smeared until it's almost unreadable, and below, just beyond the halo of light, Tim can see the shadow of a body.

* * *

Tim is on the motel bed, staring up at the ceiling. He can feel the mask on his face. He can smell the blood.

There's a camera on the bedside table next to an alarm clock that's flashing 00:00 and black glove stiff with dried blood.

Someone is gone. Someone he knew for a little while. Someone who mattered. He can't remember who anymore. He can hardly remember anything at all. 

Soon, he doesn't remember that there was ever a someone. Soon, he doesn't remember why he ever wanted to take off this mask.

He turns his head slowly toward the camera and watches as the tape ends and the red light goes out, and the thing standing in the corner of his room moves closer. Under the mask, he smiles.


End file.
